International Trade

The International Trade Programme provides a comprehensive portfolio of tests to ensure that exported and imported animals and their products are free of specific diseases.

The Programme informs and supports the development and implementation of government policies in this area by providing a comprehensive testing service to:

• Support Defra’s import controls by ensuring that animals and animal feed entering Great Britain do not carry specific infections that are not present here or are part of a national disease control programme.
• Ensure that animals due to be exported comply with the export certification requirements of the destination countries.

The Programme also provides veterinary and scientific consultancy, disease risk assessment on a case-by-case basis and reports on Great Britain’s freedom from specific diseases.

We are proud of the high quality testing service we offer. VLA is ISO 9001 certified and the vast majority of tests carried out for International Trade are accredited under the UKAS ISO 17025 quality standard. UKAS is an independent inspection body specialising in internationally recognised standards.

Over 80 different tests are used at 12 VLA testing locations to assist the safe importation of animals from 27 different countries and exportation to 39 different countries.

The export of farm livestock from Great Britain was seriously affected in 2007/08 by the restrictions introduced following the FMD outbreaks in 2007. As part of Defra’s FMD Export Recovery Programme, VLA will be hosting visits from major export markets during 2008 to explain about the testing facilities at VLA and assure them of Great Britain’s ability to utilise testing to eliminate disease outbreaks.

The volume of export testing fell by nearly 45% from 148,000 tests to 83,000 this year. Despite this, testing of imported farmed species actually increased moderately from 12,000 tests to 20,000 this year.

In the autumn of 2007, an outbreak of equine influenza in Queensland, Australia, meant that horses being exported from the UK were required to be tested for infection before shipping. In collaboration with the Animal Health Trust at Newmarket, VLA was able to organise this testing at short notice, thus minimising the impact on Great Britain’s export trade to Australia.

The supply of test kits for the equine piroplasmosis ELISA was problematic during the year. Despite careful management of the kits, VLA had to suspend testing. All major horse exporters were contacted to explain the situation. The USA, who insist on an ELISA test, have the same issue with test kit supply but are now testing horses using an ‘in-house’ method. It is VLA’s intention to explore the feasibility of validating the US test as the primary or back up method for pre-export testing.

VLA received 2,759 CEMO submissions, consisting of 6,397 swabs, for international trade purposes in 2007. One animal was positive on culture and PCR. In July 2007, the VLA was involved in the organisation of the International Conference on Contagious Equine Metritis, for which the VLA Regional Laboratory at Bury St Edmunds is the OIE World Reference Laboratory. An international panel of speakers met at the Central Institute for Animal Disease Control (CIDC) Laboratory in the Netherlands to review the status of the disease worldwide and discuss advances in the diagnosis and detection of the causative organism, Taylorella equigenitalis.

In conjunction with VLA’s Commercial Department, a meeting was held with the Hong Kong authorities to agree the provision of testing for horses competing in the 2007 pre-Olympic equine events in Hong Kong, as well as for the Olympic Games themselves. VLA will also test horses from several international equine teams prior to their export from GB to Hong Kong for the summer 2008 Games. Andrew Soldan, former head of VLA’s International Trade Programme, will be on secondment to the Hong Kong authorities for three months to oversee the equine diagnostic testing during the Games. The experience gained will be of great value to Great Britain in our own preparations for 2012.

There was an extensive consultation on glanders testing with laboratories in Europe and India as a result of investigations into the status of donkeys imported from Romania in the first quarter of 2007. Two members of VLA’s International Trade testing team visited Professor Uppal of the Diagnostic Research Laboratories in Pune, India to learn from his experience in working on the eradication programme in that country.

The visit was a great success with VLA giving presentations on glanders, laboratory organisation and operating within ISO 17025 quality systems. As a result of this visit, VLA now has direct access to a large supply of field positive glanders sera; a disease extinct in Western Europe since 1950. We hope to utilise this opportunity to benefit the international network of testing laboratories through improved quality assurance.

We are proud of the high quality testing service we offer at VLA. The vast majority of tests carried out for International Trade are accredited under UKAS 17025.